Person features and typological implications: Disparate effects of a single person feature: Case syncretism,incorporation, passivization, and advancement to indirect object

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• Daniel Harbour (QMUL)
• Wednesday 26 May 2010, 09:00-10:00
• GR-04, English Faculty Building.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Theresa Biberauer.

Across Kiowa-Tanoan, direct objects are subject to a variety of syntactic and morphological effects, including what have been described as obligatory incorporation, passivization, and advancement to indirect object. It has furthermore been noted (e.g., by Rosen and by Heck and Richards) that the conditions under which these effects operate are similar to those under which the Person Case Constraint holds. Focusing on Kiowa, Adger and Harbour show that the mechanism behind the Person Case Constraint, and some of its frequent crosslinguistically concomitant syncretisms, are captured by positing a dual role for the feature [±participant] (as an interpretable component of pronouns and as an uninterpretable selectional feature on applicatives). This talk shows that precisely the same mechanism is responsible for incorporation, passivization, and advancement to indirect object. Languages to be discussed: Kiowa, Jemez (Towa), Southern Tiwa, Picurís (Northern Tiwa), (Rio Grande / Santa Clara) Tewa.

This talk is part of the Cambridge-QMUL Phi Workshop series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge-QMUL Phi Workshop
• GR-04, English Faculty Building

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